It was founded in 1939 as the first Musisches Gymnasium of the then Greater German Reich at Adolf Hitler's request and closed after the end of the Second World War in 1945.
In its internal constitution, the Musisches Gymnasium retained a special position within the National Socialist elite schools, for example through the performance of otherwise suppressed church musical works or the inclusion of confessional religious instruction in the timetable.
However, the implementation of his plans was not yet possible at the time, because Kestenberg was only active in a leading position, as a ministerial councillor, in the Prussian Ministry of Spiritual, Educational and Medical Affairs [de] from 1929.
He did implement the first fundamental reform of the German school music system, but shortly afterwards, in January 1933, the National Socialists came to power and put an abrupt end to his work.
Another idea developed after the Nazi seizure of power, the SS-Sturmbannführer Martin Miederer, who in 1937 was appointed senior government councillor and head of the music department in the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture (REM).
The school was located in Haus Buchenrode in the Niederrad district, the former villa of the Frankfurt industrialist and honorary citizen Arthur von Weinberg.
[3] According to witness reports, the then mayor Friedrich Krebs and other National Socialist functionaries forcibly gained entry and sent the almost eighty-year-old owner into the park with the sentence "The Jew has to go" in preparation for the forced sale of his house.
The Musisches Gymnasium began operations on 6 November 1939 with 115 pupils, who came from all parts of the then German Reich and all lived in the boarding school.
As the premises of Buchenrode House were too small, the Gymnasium took over other neighbouring properties at the end of 1939, including the aryanized residential building Niederräder Landstraße 26.